Rice Cooker Risotto

Mention chicken breasts and the last thing you would probably picture would be chicken breasts with skin on them. So you could imagine my surprise when I saw that Sainsbury's have expanded their line yet again to include, amongst other things, skin-on chicken fillets. I was trying to look for ways to get rid of my bottle of Sainsbury's Basics White Wine as well as what is left of my rice before my household leaves my current flat. A risotto with chicken, courgette and some sort of salted meat for flavour sounded promising, so I decided to pick this up along with several other groceries.

While I was at it, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could make a risotto using the rice cooker, but nonetheless still opted to brown the chicken first for better flavour.

Heat the Basics pepperoni in a pan. Once enough oil has been extracted from the pepperoni add the chicken breasts to the pan, skin-side down, and brown.

Dice the chicken breasts while deglazing the pan with Sainsbury's Basics White Wine.

Wash the rice once. Crumble the now crispy pepperoni into the rice, and add the chicken breasts after dicing, along with diced Basics courgettes. Add the deglazing from the pan, and a generous amount of Basics Hard Cheese.

Fill with Sainsbury's Basics White Wine, such that the water level above the rice and other ingredients is one joint of your index finger. Top up with water if necessary. Cook in rice cooker until done.

The wine dominated the flavour of the rice, so perhaps I should have made up for it by adding more cheese and perhaps other herbs as well. Overall however I am satisfied with how this has turned out and would consider exploring more combinations I could put into the rice cooker.

British Chicken Fillet Portions (skin on): £8.33/kg, approx. 300g
+£0.90 for fillets with no skin

Chicken Roll

One of the few things I have bought as we pack up over here is Sainsbury's Basics Chicken Roll. This was done as I was looking for something to use to finish up the Sainsbury's Basics sliced bread that I have in the freezer for a while now. Since I have tried the Basics corned beef and ham already, I thought of having chicken roll for a change.

The chicken roll consists of reformed chicken, which, according to this link, is chicken that has been finely chopped, cooked, compressed tightly, then bound together with milk proteins, which give the result its milky colour. There is a Sainsbury's own-brand version of the product, though if you would like to have chicken that has not been processed as much, Sainsbury's does have other products in its range (though not in the Basics range) that is simply, say, sliced roast chicken.

For all intents and purposes though, the Basics Chicken Roll is just chicken. I have used it in a sandwich and found it very palatable, and at 97p for 400g of cooked meat, is a cheap source of protein that does not have as strong a smell as ham.

There has to be more use for chicken roll other than sandwiches though. Unfortunately I couldn't think of any, and so I had to run down the chicken roll with nothing but sandwiches. Feel free to comment here with suggestions as to what I could have done aside from sticking it into bread, for the benefit of other readers.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Chicken Roll	£0.97	40, 400g	+£0.18 for 10, 125g (!)	Slightly thicker slices

Chicken & Vegetable Pie

I have just returned from my break, and I am slowly getting round to my regular routine again. That includes posting regularly on this blog, although again, I am doing a slow-rolling start instead of jumping straight into cooking demonstrations that are de riguer here. One of the things I managed to stash prior to going for my break are the Chicken & Vegetable Pies shown above.

Aside from Fish & Chips, pastry pies of various sorts are deeply ingrained in British cuisine, offering warm comfort from the colder parts of the year. It's somewhat surprising though that the Sainsbury's Basics range only offers Chicken & Vegetable pie. The other pies in the range are usually potato-topped, or pork pies, which are slightly different from the pies that people outside of the UK are used to. Beef is not that expensive in this country, and in fact, there is a Sainsbury's Basics Cottage Pie, so I fail to see why there isn't a beef-based pastry pie available.

As I was feeling particularly hungry, I decided to pop two pies into the oven. Given also that I have spent two weeks eating outside of the UK, the pies were a gentle reintroduction to the food I'm used to over here.

While the pies had real chicken (making up 9% of the total pie, according to the ingredients), and had chicken stock to flavour the filling, the pie still tasted bland overall. The pastry was pretty good though, being crispy though not too greasy. The pie would probably be best accompanied by richly flavoured mashed potato, say with cheese or mustard, to make up for the blandness of the pie.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Chicken & Vegetable Pie (frozen)	£1.00	4 x 121g	+£1.00 for 4 x 150g	Higher chicken content. Recommended.

GUEST CHEF - Marcus "Pierre White" Lim

Dear readers, no doubt in recent days you may have heard that your regular, trusted blog author has been laid low from an acute case of salmonella poisoning, due in no small part to a rather misjudged attempt at making custard from some pigeon eggs he found on a ramble through Hyde Park.

In much the same way a trusted senior executive is often jetted in to rescue an embattled, and embezzling CEO, or how shadowy American forces are parachuted in to extricate a banana republic dictator, I am very glad to be invited by Señor Alwyn Tan to guest host this gleaming bastion of bargain banqueting, this towering mansion of marked-down mastication, this truly magnificent den of discount dégustation.

Today, we will be recreating an old classic, oven roast chicken breast stuffed with sage-infused mustard butter, wrapped in seared Serrano ham, over a bed of ravioli alla spagnuola.

As usual, apply to your nearest Sainsbury's for their cheapest choice products as follows:
1. Basics Chicken Breast (£4.27)
2. Basics Tomatoes (£0.67)
3. Basics Mushroom Tortellini (£1.12)
4. Basics Salted Butter (£0.54)
5. Basics Mushrooms (£0.85)
6. Basics Tomato and Herb Sauce (£1.67)

The other three products are not in the basics range, but as Alwyn is busy vomiting up his smaller intestines in the next room, I feel it safe to embark on a few value judgements the cheap bugger would otherwise nix.

Firstly, Taste the Difference Serrano Ham at £1.87 for five slices,

Fresh sage at £0.78, and

Sainsbury's French Dijon Mustard, at £0.57 - a whopping 12p more expensive than their basics tin of yellow goo.

Preparations - Meat course
To begin, chop the tomatoes in sixths, and then the mushrooms.

Layer fresh sage leaves seven deep, roll up lengthwise, and shred. Take a moment to breath in the smell, and think of the French countryside.

Combine shredded sage in a bowl with four tablespoons of French dijon mustard and three of butter. Mix well. Think of a French milkmaid churning butter.

Slice chicken breasts halfway through the fleshiest parts. Think of the French milkmaid's.....er.. cows....

Spoon a generous amount of sage butter into chicken breast. Then, carefully wrap with two slices of Serrano Ham for each breast.

Sear breasts in a hot oiled pan for 30 seconds on each side, until brown.

Transfer to a pan and roast in preheated 210 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Preparations - Tortellini

Sautée mushrooms in pan, when brown, add tomatoes.

Combine in saucepan with Tomato and Herb sauce. Bring to boil

In separate saucepan of boiling water, boil tortellini for no more than 7 minutes.

Spoon generous amount of sauce into bowl, then using a slotted spatula, spoon three heaps of tortellini into bowl.

Mix sauce and pasta, then transfer to plate.

Remove chicken from oven, let rest for 2 minutes.

Slice and serve.

Just d'alors! We are done, no? What is it you say? It looks too good to be just a Sainsbury Basics dinn-ah?

Mais oui! You are correct, a maintanente, it eees 'ow you say eet? A bluff...

You think a dinner pour deux like dees costs only £12.34?

Yoo are mistaken! eet was actually flown in from my restaurant on zee Amalfi Coast, and would 'ave cost yooo almost two 'a-hndred euros, plus service.

What you say? eet does not look like a two 'a-hndred euro meal, well zehn, Ah speet in your face, Ah have nev-ARH been soo insulted in mah lahfe.....

To contact our Guest Chef, you may write to:

Marcus "Pierre White" Lim

Ristorante The Le Tratteria

512 Rue le Fiffi, Via del Puttacesca

The Amalfi Coast, BRISTOL

BS1 2EL

[Editor's note: Today's post is brought to you by a good friend of mine from my secondary school days. If you haven't done so already, please peruse the oxygen masks that have deployed from the overhead compartments. We shall resume our normal programming shortly.]

Curry and Naan

Yet another new Basics product from Sainsbury's spotted at my local this week. It seems though that the Sainsbury's Basics Naan has been around for a while, being first given attention in the MoneySavingExpert Sainsbury's Basics forum thread around July 2009. Whoever runs the Sainsbury's product development department probably realised that Indian food is very pervasive in life in the UK, and that introducing Naan in the Basics range would be a godsend to university students and everybody else looking to reduce the grocery budget, particularly during the more intense periods of the economic crisis. Not having had Indian food for a while, I thought this would be interesting for today's post.

I needed something to go along with the naan though, and I have already covered the Sainsbury's Basics Curry Sauce in a previous post. Wandering around the aisles, I remembered there were other curry products in the Basics range, and one of them came with no staple, and so fit the bill nicely.

Canned food is cheap, lasts long, and is often ready to eat by heating the contents, making them suitable for university students, who often have tight budgets, may have to cancel plans for dinner for last-minute outings, and could devote the time or energy usually used to prepare food to other things that make university life so fulfilling. Most of my friends from or at university though shun this because we all come from a country that places emphasis on good food. So the only reason why I'm venturing to try the Sainsbury's Basics Chicken Curry is to complement the naan.

Since I have the Sainsbury's Basics Italian Hard Cheese lying around, I could make a really nice cheese naan, which could double up as my fall back meal should the canned chicken curry prove to be horrible.

And horrible the chicken curry most certainly was. It turns out that 13% chicken content in a tin of chicken curry amounts to almost nothing, short of a few strands here and there. The curry was bland, and almost lacking in any spicy kick, suspiciously similar to the Basics curry sauce. You might as well buy a jar of the curry sauce and add in your own vegetables and meat, as illustrated in the Kiev Katsu Kurry Don I posted a while ago.

On the other hand, the naan managed to save the dinner by being soft and chewy with a pleasant flavour. The addition of Basics Italian Hard Cheese also added a nice touch. I ended up finishing the curry first before going the naan, saving the best for last.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Chicken Curry	£0.48	392g	+£0.60	Choice between mild and hot, triple the chicken content. Recommended.
Plain Naan	£0.59	2	+£0.30	Not known

Chicken Burgers

While I was at Finchley Road to get the Chicken Kievs used in my previous posts, I also came across some Basics breaded chicken burgers. Remembering that I have not encountered anything like this before, I thought it would be interesting if I bought this and feature it in a post. Given the buns and cheese singles that I had at my disposal, I could relive a memory I had prior to coming to the UK.

I studied for my GCE 'A'-Level examinations at what we called Junior College and what the rest of the world called the final two years of high school. One of the most popular stalls in the college canteen was the 'western food' stall, selling food originating from European and American culture. My most regular order from there was two chicken burgers with cheese, being unable to afford the more expensive things on their menu. The circumstances are now that I have the means to create a lookalike of the burgers I had back when I was a teenager.


Be forewarned, the chicken core is 62% of the burger, and out of this core, only half of it is chicken thigh. If you do your math, only 31% of the burger consists of real chicken.

Preparation is simple, and shall only be expressed in photos.


This was arguably one of the worse items I have tried so far. The breaded chicken burgers were airy, and had no meaty texture, giving one the impression of deep-fried tofu. It has actually piqued my curiosity enough to try the Bird's Eye Chicken Burgers separately.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Breaded Chicken Burgers	£1.00	8	+£1.99 (Bird's Eye)	Breast meat instead of thigh, no textured wheat protein

Kiev Katsu Kurry Spaghetti with Cheese

A while ago my friend saw my Kiev Katsu Kurry Don post, and recommended that the next time I try something similar that I add cheese. Finding that a little odd, I asked her where she got the idea from, and it turns out that she actually had Katsu Curry Udon with Cheese at a Japanese restaurant back home. I also remembered that the last time I was back I came across a dozen or so Japanese pasta restaurants, which feature interesting things on spaghetti or penne like cod with teriyaki, prawn tempura with a tomato sauce, miso-based beef stew and even deep-fried calamari with curry sauce. These two findings sufficiently piqued my interest to want to try this at home.
I have already covered mild cheddar cheese however, and I'm not keen on buying another block of it, or even a block of a different type of cheese, like mature cheddar or double gloucester, since being rather similar in the sense that they are all proper cheese it would probably not make for a very interesting article. What I'm going to use instead though are these cheese singles. I've seen my former flatmate use this as a cheap alternative to cheese, but have never tried this myself. More commonly known as processed cheese, this is probably more familiar to people coming from my home country, having grown up with the likes of Kraft Singles and Chesdale.

This was probably the worst cheese single I have come across. The slices are thin, and the smell is a bit on the artificial side. It also does not help when the actual cheese content is at 11%, which probably explains why this is not labelled as cheese singles. When one considers that the next more expensive option - the Sainsbury's Reduced Fat Cheese singles, contains 500% more cheese (60% of total ingredient makeup) at a less than 50% increase in price, you wonder if these cheese slices are worth the hassle. The regular Cheese singles don't contain palm oil as well, so for 25p more you avoid a potential health hazard.

For such a strong smell that the cheese single has, its taste is very faint, and its texture is almost non-existent, dissolving rapidly as one presses tongue against single.

Anyway, on to the recipe. Preparation is similar to the Kiev Katsu Kurry Don, except that a cheese single and herb mix is added to the sauce during preparation.





The cheese had no effect on the curry sauce at all. Personally, having tried this, I feel that Katsu Kurry would probably be better served with rice, as at least the rice can absorb the sauce.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
(Cheese) Singles	£0.58	10	+£0.25	Higher cheese content, bigger singles. Recommended.